THE REAL ACORN

October 17, 2005

Since 1970, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has been criticized for its fraud, deception and radical political agenda; it has been implicated in Teamsters election fraud, government-grant fraud, union busting and it has sought an exemption from the very minimum wage laws it tries to force on everyone else, says the Employment Policies Institute (EPI).

A recent report exposes the group's widespread pattern of voter fraud even while it pushes an extreme agenda and hypocritical wage hikes, state by state, says EPI:

In New Mexico -- just one of the 11 states where employees were accused of submitting blatantly false voter registration forms during the 2004 election -- an employee registered a 13-year-old boy to vote and four employees submitted as many as 3,000 potentially fraudulent signatures on the group's minimum wage ballot initiative for Albuquerque.

ACORN's widespread practice of fraud was highlighted in Florida's 2004 election, when the group led a ballot initiative seeking a $6.15 minimum wage; quality control workers routinely removed registration cards for Republican voters, thousands of invalid cards were submitted and ACORN failed to turn in boxes of cards for Republican voters.

Also in Florida, ACORN submitted a false voter registration card for former Democratic mayor of St. Petersburg Charles Schuh to election officials. They had signed his name and altered his social security number to register him as a 30-year-old female Republican.

Furthermore, ACORN's fraudulent activities are not limited to voter registration cards; employees routinely accept signatures for the minimum wage ballot initiative from individuals who are not currently registered to vote -- another violation of Florida law, says EPI.